The Mailman

by Bates, Jeremy

  “A cash point?” she said.

  “An ATM.”

  “Why would Mick go to an ATM at this hour?” She glanced at her gold wristwatch. “It’s past midnight.”

  Bracelets jangling, the singer plucked an olive from the snack plate and slid it between his lips. “Why does anyone go to an ATM, soonshyine? To get money.”

  “But why does Mick need money?”

  “Mick doesn’t need money. I need money. I’m piss bloody broke.”

  “I thought your band just got an advance—”

  “Which won’t be available for a few weeks. Bureaucratic bullshit, you see. Don’t worry though, Jade. It’s just a loan, and I honor my debts. Now, why don’t you take a seat and relax. Mick will be back in a jiff.”

  Jade hesitated. She didn’t want to return to the club proper. Not with Ronnie out there. Nor did she want to wait around in the common backstage area with all the roadies and strippers, if that’s what some of the girls were. But remain here with the singer of The Tempests? Admittedly he wasn’t half as crazy as she’d been expecting, or his stage persona led one to believe. In fact, he didn’t seem crazy at all…

  “You don’t mind?” she said cautiously.

  The singer gestured toward an armchair. She sat down in it.

  He said, “You seem tense, Jade. Is something wrong?”

  She forced herself to meet his eyes. His poise was incredible. He seemed so calm, cool, collected, like he was already one of the biggest rock stars in the world. Was this confidence or arrogance?

  “What’s your name?” she asked him.

  “It’s Tommy, love,” he told her.

  Jade had been expecting something more exotic. Zed or Stryker, maybe. Not Tommy. The boy across the street from the house in which she had grown up had been named Tommy.

  She said, “I didn’t know you were English.”

  “It doesn’t come out in the singing, does it?”

  “You sound like Davy Jones from The Monkees.”

  “Fuck, shoot me, please. Did you like the show, Jade?”

  “Yes,” she said. “You certainly live up to your hype.”

  “And what hype is that?”

  “Mick told me you were the most dangerous band in the world.”

  Tommy smiled thinly. “The most dangerous. Yeah, I’ve heard that one.” He seemed to consider this. “Let me tell you something about myself, Jade, if I may? Two years ago I sold the van I had been living out of to buy a plane ticket to Seattle. Tickets there were cheaper than to LA. I hitchhiked south. Somewhere in Colorado a trucker picked me up, a big bloke, he was. He stopped at a motel overnight and said I could sleep on the floor of the room. Stupid me. I woke up to the chap on my back trying to get his slug up my ass. I bashed a bottle across his head. Got him right on the temple and knocked him clean out. Took his wallet and drove his rig the rest of the way to LA, where I slept on the streets, behind Dumpsters, benches, wherever. I didn’t know anybody, had no place to go, nothing to do except try to find a band. Problem was, nobody wanted a singer. There were ads for guitarists, drummers, never a singer. So I remained homeless for a good month, getting by on about four dollars a day, enough to buy biscuits and gravy at Denny’s and a half-pint of cheap wine. During one of those nights some drunks found me sleeping beneath the loading dock at Tower Records. They beat the shit out of me for no proper reason. But I’d started carrying a knife after that trucker incident.” He raised something dangling around his neck, which turned out to be a switchblade. He popped the blade, turning it this way and that, admiring the presumably sharp edge. Jade stiffened but didn’t move. “I stabbed one of them in the chest,” Tommy continued conversationally. “The rest of them beat me up some more, only stopping because they realized they had to get their mate to the hospital before he croaked. Why am I telling you this, Jade? Because I’m a street rat. Blokes like me, the other blokes in the band, we’re all street rats, and it’s a bloody jungle out there. Until recently nobody has ever given a shit about us. We’ve had to fight every day just to survive, and we fight hard. Because like Dylan said, when you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose. Does this make us dangerous?” He shrugged. “Desperate is more like it. And I’m fine with that. I’d like people to start calling us the most desperate band in the world. Because there’s nothing wrong with being desperate. It makes you want what you don’t have. It makes you want to climb out of your hole. It makes you want to grab life by the balls. Do you know what I mean, Jade? Just really fucking grab it and make it yours. Fuck everybody who stands in your way. That’s what it feels like for me, every time I’m on stage, no matter how big or small the crowd. I just want to rip the fucking throat out of life. You can’t touch the stars, that’s out of everybody’s reach, but you can live this terrestrial life to the skeleton, just fucking soak it all in, soak it all in, man.”

  Jade had fallen under a spell listening to the enigmatic rock star wax eloquent, and she barely heard the knock at the door.

  “Mick!” she said.

  He entered the dressing room. “Glad you found your way back here.”

  Tommy held out his hand. “Lay it on me, man.”

  Mick withdrew a wad of cash from his pocket and handed it to the singer. To Jade he said, “It’s an advance on his advance—”

  “Tommy explained already.”

  Tommy thumbed through the cash. “Now the sooner you can get us out of that shitty storage shed, Mick, the better. I ain’t fucking kidding when I tell you the place is crawling with roaches and rats.”

  “I’ve looked at a house on Fountain Avenue. Should be ready to move in soon. Maybe a day or two. You’ll be the first to know. Jade, are you ready to go?”

  She stood. “It was nice meeting you, Tommy. All the best with the record.”

  “Thanks, soonshyine,” he replied. “We’ll try to defy expectations and live long enough to record it.”

  ♀

  Much to Jade’s relief, they exited The Whisky through a back door, though she felt uncomfortably exposed while they waited out front for the valet to bring the Corvette around. However, her worry turned out to be for naught as Ronnie didn’t show up, and then they were in the car, safely on the way home.

  During the ride Mick spoke mostly about the show, how happy he was with how it had gone. “No catastrophes,” was the phrase he kept repeating, which, when it came to The Tempests, was apparently a gold standard for success.

  Jade contributed bits and pieces to the conversation, mostly about Tommy, how he’d defied any expectation she’d had of him. Mick explained that he was the only one in the band not strung out. Apparently he had been an addict in England and had alienated everybody he knew. This prompted him to get clean, and it was keeping him from relapsing.

  “He’d prefer if the others got clean as well,” Mick told her, “especially the bassist, who’s not only using but openly dealing. But, hell, good luck with that. Being in a band is like being in a marriage. You’re never always going to see eye to eye. Sometimes you just have to shut up and look the other way.”

  Mick expounded further on this point, though Jade’s mind was far away, thinking about Ronnie. Surely he wasn’t going to follow up on his threat and pay Mick a visit at his work? And surely he hadn’t made a tape of them having sex? Not that it mattered if he had or not. His word would be enough. Because Mick would then confront her. He would see right through her denials. He would know she had cheated on him, and their marriage would be over.

  Jade clenched her teeth tightly. She couldn’t believe Ronnie had turned on her like he had. It made her so angry, all the more so because she had liked him. She had really liked him. She had given herself to him. She had trusted him. This made his betrayal all the more bewildering and hurtful.

  Nevertheless, at least she could see clearly now. She was no longer blinded by a transient crush, and it was clear as day how silly and misguided she had been to do what she had done, to risk what she had risked.

  Sevente
en years of marriage, memories to fill scrapbooks, boxes of them.

  All for ten minutes of passion.

  Was she crazy?

  Was everyone who committed adultery crazy?

  Chapter 14

  When they got home Mick ran a hot shower in the upstairs bathroom. The Whisky had been a sauna, causing him to sweat through his clothes. Not only that, his hair reeked of cigarette smoke, the smell making him crave one more than usual.

  Goddamn emphysema. He’d take diabetes over it any day, because at least than he could have a goddamn smoke.

  While he lathered his body with soap, the bathroom door opened and Jade entered. Mick figured she either wanted to brush her teeth or pee. Sharing the bathroom like this was something only people who knew each other very well—perhaps too well—would put up with.

  Instead of going to the sink or toilet, however, Jade opened the foggy shower door. She slipped her housecoat off her shoulders and stepped inside the glass stall, which wasn’t much larger than a phone booth.

  Plucking the sudsy sponge from his hand, she drew it over his chest, then down over his abdomen, then lower still.

  “Well, hello,” he said with a grin.

  Chapter 15

  Saturday morning Jade returned to Canter’s Deli on Fairfax. It was not as busy as it had been during the weekday. No business crowd, she supposed. She requested the booth she had on Monday and ordered a coffee.

  She had laid awake most of the previous night, and at some point in the early hours of the morning she had reached a conclusion to explain Ronnie’s abrupt and remarkable personality flip.

  He was a serial blackmailer, and his modus operandi went something like this: While on his mail route, he looked for a home-alone housewife. After selecting one, he would keep an eye on her until an opportunity presented itself in which he could arrange a “coincidental” meeting. He would ingratiate himself with her, playing to his strengths: his youth, his charm, his good looks. If he was successful getting her back to his place, he would secretly record the two of them having sex. He would then meet her again at some inopportune moment, preferably when her husband was around, with a new and venomous persona, with the intention of confusing and scaring her. After she had a few days to stew over the dicey predicament she found herself in, he would tell her that he wanted money in exchange for his silence.

  The pieces all fit, Jade thought, and they fit well.

  So the question she now faced: Would she pay Ronnie what he asked?

  She didn’t want to, of course. She didn’t care so much about a one-time payout. She could scrape together whatever Ronnie’s demand was, she was sure, without raising Mick’s suspicion. Yet when it came to blackmail, it was never as simple as a one-time payout, was it? Blackmailers were like mosquitos. They might leave you alone for a spell, but they always came back. The scent of blood was too appealing.

  So even if Jade paid Ronnie what he asked, she would not be done with him. He would return. Maybe in a year, maybe in two, but he would be back, his hand outstretched.

  Nevertheless, Jade could see no other alternative than to pay him off. Every other option, including going to the police, would lead to Mick finding out what she had done.

  And she couldn’t let that happen. Mick was such a good man. He had been so good to her over the years. She had taken this for granted. She had been a spoiled brat. She had thought she needed more, more, more.

  She didn’t. She knew that now.

  Pushing her now-cold coffee aside, Jade looked around the diner a final time.

  Ronnie wasn’t coming. Hoping he might make an appearance had been a long shot to begin with.

  He would find her again when the time suited him.

  ♂

  The remainder of the weekend passed uneventfully. Jade finished weeding the backyard, then called a landscaping company to deliver a truckload of mulch the following week. She watered and pruned the garden, keeping all of the larger cuttings to be used as kindling in the fireplace. In the evening she and Mick ordered pizza and watched the second half of Scarface. The following morning she went to the Farmers Market on West Third Street, then spent most of the afternoon playing the piano. After a roast dinner, she vegged out in front of the TV, flipping between Murder, She Wrote and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, while Mick made phone call after phone call in his office as he searched desperately for a manager brave enough to take on The Tempests.

  Routine, she thought, had never felt so simple and pleasant.

  On Monday morning, after Mick had left for work, and after she had done two loads of laundry, Jade retrieved the mail from the mailbox. It was almost always for Mick—barring information about a Readers’ Digest sweepstake she’d entered or something along those lines—and she usually left the stack of letters on the desk in his study without giving it a second glance. Today, however, one envelope caught her notice. It was unaddressed and unstamped.

  Which meant the mailman hadn’t delivered it—at least, the regular mailman.

  She tore open the flap.

  Chapter 16

  A rare thunderstorm rolled over Los Angeles late that afternoon—the weather people said it was due to tropical air blowing in from a hurricane off the coast of Mexico—and Mick dashed from the Corvette to the back door of the house, his suitcase held above his head to protect himself the best he could from the driving rain.

  He found Jade pacing in the living room. A half-empty bottle of wine sat on the table, next to an empty wine glass. She seemed pale, somehow withered, her eyes glassy, but from pain rather than drink—or perhaps both.

  Someone’s died, Mick thought immediately. His mother? His father? Jade didn’t have anyone left except her sister. Had something happened to her?

  “Jade?” he said, gripping her gently by the arms. “Hon? What’s going on? What happened?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, barely audible. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Jade?” A little relief. Sorry? “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “I did something horrible.”

  More relief. No one’s died. No one’s sick.

  But what could Jade have done that was so terrible?

  An accident? God—was she in a car accident? Did she hit someone?

  “It’s all right, Jade,” he said, seating her at the table. He sat down next to her. She stared into her lap. He took her hands in his and massaged the tops of them with his thumbs. “Were you in an accident?”

  “I slept with someone,” she said.

  Mick didn’t react. He was stupefied.

  Jade had cheated on him?

  He’d thought he’d been prepared for anything, but this was almost too much.

  He released her hands as if realizing he’d been touching a leper.

  Jade had cheated on him?

  He stood up and moved across the room, turning his back to her.

  Desiree cheating on Jeffrey, that wouldn’t have surprised him. She was half his age, a gold digger, and when the next sugar daddy pulled into the station, she would be all aboard. Even Gloria cheating on Bob wouldn’t have been such a surprise. Although they had been married for thirty years, Gloria was Beverly Hills through and through: tough, impatient, magnetic, infuriating, scheming. He wouldn’t put anything outside of her reach.

  But Jade? Good, sweet, bighearted Jade?

  He faced her. “Do you want to explain what the fuck you’re talking about, Jade?”

  “Last week, the mailman—”

  “The mailman!” he exploded.

  “Listen to me, Mick!” she cried. “Please, just listen…”

  He clamped his mouth shut, buttoned down his anger, and listened. How the mailman had approached her table at some diner, how they’d had lunch together, how he’d needed a ride home, how she’d driven him—the bitch, the fucking bitch, she knew exactly where things were leading—how he invited her inside to get some recipe—oh God did it really have to be this corny?—and then…

  Jade broke down in fits of
tears. She covered her face with her hands.

  Mick glared at her, wanting to hurl something spiteful. But perhaps playing it cool would hurt her more. Perhaps he should leave without a word, spend the night in a hotel.

  Let her think he had left her. That would teach her.

  She took something from the pocket of her pants. She held it for him to take in a trembling hand.

  Mick frowned. It was a birth certificate.

  “What the hell’s that?” he asked regardless.

  “It was in the mailbox this morning.”

  His curiosity getting the better of him, he picked it from her fingers and read the name.

  Leslie Freeman.

  The bottom of his stomach dropped away. “Why was this…?” He shook his head. “Did he…find us?”

  But this wasn’t making sense. If their son had somehow tracked them down, why had he left his birth certificate in the mailbox? Why not knock on the door?

  Their son.

  Their son.

  The word seemed alien to him.

  They didn’t have a son. They’d given him up for adoption twenty-one years ago.

  How had he found them? How long had he been looking for them…?

  The revelation of the birth certificate had been such a stunning turnoff events Mick had momentarily forgotten about his wife’s confession.

  Now something clicked inside him, a realization, and it was much more hideous than her confession had been.

  “No…” he said, staring at Jade with undisguised disgust. “Jade? Jade? Look at me. Goddammit, look at me! You didn’t! Tell me you didn’t!”

  But he knew immediately it was true.

  Chapter 17

  Rain drummed on the windowpanes of the house. Lightning crashed in the sky, scaring hard-edged shadows across the dimly lit room. Thunder rolled and boomed. Jade expected it all. Pathetic fallacy. Wasn’t that what they called it when the weather reflected your mood? She was pretty sure it was. And given she was in hell right then, she had never been in a worse place in her life, a thunderstorm to reflect her mood seemed completely appropriate.